The Jail Pupil
by Peregrination
Summary: Faith thinks about color in jail.


Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. It's very sad. All credit for the characters goes to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, etc. Not me. Damn.  
  
Distribution: Are you kidding? I'd go insane with joy. Just tell me where, so I can watch and gloat.   
  
Spoilers: Faith. All of it. Nothing specific.   
  
Author's Notes: My first posted fic, yipes! Send feedback with love!  
  
She looks at the walls every once in a while. They're gray. She knows this now, knew this always. Most of the walls she's seen in her life were gray, or variations of it. Her mother's room was gray, she remembers, but the kitchen was beige. Beige is another popular color in her life. Pale colors, mostly. Her watcher's room was green, she recalls dimly. A pale green. She had thought it was bright, like the stems of the flowers she had never picked. Now she knows it was not foliage green she saw, but a washed-out, faded, floods had come and gone and left this room with all the brightness tagging along, kind of color. Elvis has left the building, she thinks, and smirks at the gray . It threatens her, threatens to jump off the wall and shove her into the pit of angst that wants her. That is where she goes when she's alone too long, when she thinks too hard. She can feel it lapping at her, but she's interrupted by the clanging of a heavy gray door. It's bedtime in the jail, time for teeth and showers and a lock. She strolls into the bathroom, more gray surrounding her. But she swallows and forces her shoulders to snap back and her hair to swish and with that, the gray shrinks back a bit. She strides to the sink, the soft padding of the weak shoes so different from the pounding and clicking that echo in her mind, even without the tangible boots on her feet. Everyone's quiet around her, the chatter stops, and she's happy out of tradition, out of years of experience that told her she wanted control and respect. She looks at her pale face and lank hair in the mirror and decides she just wishes the gray would go away. But right now, leaving the gray means entering the black, and though it would make everything so easy, she knows in the end, the black sucks you in worse than the gray.   
  
She remembers the black, remembers how she escaped when she found her watcher, how it chased her after the death, two steps ahead of Kakistos and only a half step behind her, until it was pushed away but the -color- oh, god, so much color- that's what she remembers from when she was still trying to fight the good fight, be one of the Scooby gang. They all carried so much color with them, around them, little bubble made of Shrink-wrap that someone had taken a pack of markers to. She wanted it! She wanted the color even more than the relief the black would give her, but she couldn't be part of it- she didn't, doesn't go to school and she partied in the dark, the bright lights flashing all fake with the pound pound rhythm of whatever and her heart beating rough and fast against her chest-  
  
She snapped back to reality, to gray walls and gray uniforms and a yellow-white sink and sighed. She grabbed her beige toothbrush and cleaned her teeth. Walked back to her gray room with her neck straight and chin in the air, like she always did, asserting her control, her mastery. A Slayer is a slayer, after all, no matter how black she was and how gray she's become. She looked away when they locked her in. She used to watch, but it seemed too humiliating now. Odd, the feelings you get and the traditions you keep in prison. Life is very clear in jail, very quiet. Very gray. Someone colored in the coloring book perfectly within the lines, but the stupid fuck forgot and did it all in one color. One crayon.  
  
The Mayor tried to give her color. She never really called him anything but the Mayor, even though he was almost like a father. Like Giles. Father. She flips back her blanket, but sits down on the cot instead of sliding in. He gave her a dress once, beautiful, something sweet and girly and pampered. And she was thrilled- look, look at my color! This is color all for me, but she could see a tinge of black, permeating the fabric- somebody washed it with something black, and the dye leaked a bit, not too bad, good enough to wear, but stained. Tinged. Like me. Funny, she thinks, I don't remember anyone putting me through a washing machine, but it's only humor to keep away those deep thoughts she keeps having and she knows it. She laughs and speaks aloud, "Big with the metaphors, today." She stopped as the words echoed against the gray walls andfloor and door. One hand rested against her thigh; the other stroked her rough, bleach-stained blanket.   
  
She lay back and looked at thet gray ceiling. B was there. White. Pink. Blue. Color seemed to pool inside her body. She knew Buffy- knew that someday B would end up thinking there was darkness inside her. And maybe there was. But something way beyond the Slayer norm would be required to pull it out from under all that color. Angel was there too. All in black, because that was what he was, used to be, but gradually, she had seen it change, become a memorial and a homage to those he had killed, cause behind those clothes was that soul, leaking color. And then her own jail-pallid face flashed there, but there was no time to examine it for color before the lights went out and everything was engulfed in darkness. Black. Surrounding her, not kind like the Slaying nights were, but rough like her blanket underneath her, crumpled against her skin.   
  
And then there was someone talking, repeating two goddamn sentences over and over in her head. A long forgotten art teacher from a quickly forgotten school, "Color has three properties: hue, value, and intensity. But the one essential thing you need to see color is..."  
  
"Light," Faith said. And it echoed in her head.  
  
"Light..." Faith repeated, and then chuckled.  
  
"Eyes." 


End file.
